Sorry, really late reply. Was just looking over this thread and happened to see this.
Card’s writing that involves sexual attraction just comes off as asexual. I never got the sense that the characters were actually sexually attracted to each other; affectionate maybe, but not aroused. It’s like the way sexuality looks on tv, not the way people actually experience it. I recall reading Card himself say that he didn’t think he was very good at writing about sex or sexual attractions in an interview or something. It might have been in the Folk of the the Fringe book somewhere but I can’t find it in my library.
Ok, I guess I agree with that. He either cannot or will not write such that you feel the emotions associated with sexual attraction; it is an area where he tells rather than showing. Perhaps this is a deliberate choice based in his Mormon religion; he’s also rather down on porn. Either way, though, it seems to me that his stories rarely suffer from this. To take an example, ‘Empire’ is way worse than the Ender sequels, but it’s not because of the sex; indeed it has effectively zero sex in it, even of the kind you describe. Rather it suffers from being nearly-explicit propaganda.
Sorry, really late reply. Was just looking over this thread and happened to see this.
Card’s writing that involves sexual attraction just comes off as asexual. I never got the sense that the characters were actually sexually attracted to each other; affectionate maybe, but not aroused. It’s like the way sexuality looks on tv, not the way people actually experience it. I recall reading Card himself say that he didn’t think he was very good at writing about sex or sexual attractions in an interview or something. It might have been in the Folk of the the Fringe book somewhere but I can’t find it in my library.
Ok, I guess I agree with that. He either cannot or will not write such that you feel the emotions associated with sexual attraction; it is an area where he tells rather than showing. Perhaps this is a deliberate choice based in his Mormon religion; he’s also rather down on porn. Either way, though, it seems to me that his stories rarely suffer from this. To take an example, ‘Empire’ is way worse than the Ender sequels, but it’s not because of the sex; indeed it has effectively zero sex in it, even of the kind you describe. Rather it suffers from being nearly-explicit propaganda.